Marketing Consultant, Speaker & Author

4 posts from May 2012

This week we take a long, hard look at where the industry is headed and what you can do about it. Reconsider what it means to be an ad man (or woman). Why advertising needs to become (almost) human. How your brand should really be using Facebook. Our stories this week aim to inspire, inform, and move you to make change happen now. Here are our 5 top reads for Friday, May 18th, 2012.

A refreshingly logical and forward-thinking examination of how the advertising industry is changing, and what you can do about it. Don’t just seek out the “now” results, the heavyweight stuff, the one big idea. Think about the many small interactions you and your brand can be initiating and involved in regularly. Sound familiar?Think about how your brand/service/product factors into people’s everyday conversations, what they’re saying about you, when it’s coming up and why. Realize that people generally do not speak strictly about brands and products in any lengthy, detailed way (excluding the ad people below). Stop relying on stealing away your audience’s attention with bright, annoying, flashing banners or messages. Depend on natural conversation between you and your customers, on crafting brand stories that people will want to discuss and share, and do this always--don’t stop. Advertisers and brands must learn to be ceaselessly creative, always adapting to what people are discussing and talking about and to fit into their lives without disruption. It’s an change, for sure. Rather than waiting on pioneers for you to assess and copy, go out now and be that innovative brand.

There’s been a lot of hubbub about GM’s move to stop advertising on Facebook (timing is everything), but rather than focus on the too-soon-to-tell Facebook ad model, your company should be taking away one very important lesson from this that can be applied immediately. While GM has no plans to advertise on Facebook in the near future, they are going to maintain their Facebook page presence. This costs them nothing and allows GM to engage their customers through content and brand stories. A brand’s online identity, the stories it tells, how it goes about telling those stories and how it allows its users to be a part of those stories--that’s what Facebook is all about. Why anyone is surprised that Facebook isn’t the ideal platform for traditional advertising is a mystery to us. Use social, yes, of course. But use it the way your customers are using it--to be social. Hurling one-sided campaigns and display ads at them is not the way. Instead, come up with a solid startegy for how you can start a frequent, ongoing conversation with your customers, that matters to your customers and is also relevant to your brand. That’s real engagement.

If you haven’t already stumbled upon this insight, this piece is worth your consideration. Looking past the studies showing that ad people are hyper-active on social media and therefore overestimate how much the average person actually uses it, the author goes on to say this makes them (yes, the advertising staffers themselves) an ideal medium for spreading content and opinions. Ad people, with their strutting, gregarious, social and pioneering ways, tend to share a lot of what’s currently inspiring them, making them laugh, making them jealous because they wish they’d come up with it first. Certainly a fair portion of that content being shared concerns inside jokes and useless infographics, but ad people also tend to have large social circles with whom they recommend products, campaigns, ads, brands, and stories. It’s a strange audience to consider for a marketer, but ad people drive influence, and if your brand or content appears on their radar as worthwhile, they’ll do the promotional legwork for you, gratis. Make content that’s creative and innovative enough to pique the interest of industry pros, and you won’t have to get the word out--they’ll speak for you, a lot.

We’ve talked about creating stories, becoming a more social brand, building content to share and better engaging your audience and customers. This is a handy checklist of some very tangible ways you can make those things happen. Stop talking about yourself--give credit where it’s due and point your followers to other excellent sources of news and information. Be focused and clear with your content. Contribute to the content community--be conversational and try to start meaningful discussions or risk tweeting upon deaf ears. Most importantly, be active and not automated. No one wants a robot in their feed, so find a style that works for you or your brand and run with it.

Right in line with what we’ve been talking about this week, Jay Baer gives you 6 great reasons why you should start thinking small and marketing content accordingly. Most of this is common sense that nonetheless gets easily forgotten--smaller means content gets picked up, read, shared, and promoted more often. His best point? Split your one big idea into 2, then 4, then 6, and so on. Do your best to skillfully break down that great idea into its component pieces that contain equally great ideas when spread out over a period of time and finally taken as a whole. Good thinking Jay - we can't help but agree.

For at least a few years, American Express has been leading its category in marketing innovation. OPEN Forum turned the card you carry into a robust social system membership. Members Project was social before social was hot. By putting the reigns in cardmembers' hands this program redefined corporate giving and, I'd argue, provided the blueprint for later entrants like Chase Community Giving. While many other issuers still rely on tactical promotions to bump-up fan counts, AmEx is forging deep partnerships with social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare and inventing new ways to transact online. It's bold stuff from one of the biggest brands in the world, but it's hardly rocket science. And that's a good thing.

Yesterday at a Direct Marketing Idea Exchange (DMIX) luncheon in New York, I had the pleasure of listening to AmEx CEO & Chairman, Ken Chenault, talk to a group of 70 or so seasoned direct marketers about four key principles guiding his company forward. While he barely touched on any of the programs I've outlined above, it was clear how the principles he outlined provide a solid foundation upon which to build new marketing, product, and business innovations.

Here are Ken's four points (bolded) and my interpretations (just about everything else).

Brands are even more important today than they were yesterday. To some, living in a world of unlimited choice might mean that brands matter less. That everything is a commodity when hundreds of similar, suitable solutions are a click, post or tweet away. But unlimited choice raises the bar for informed choice. And brand can play a key role in guiding informed choice - when that brand is trusted and stands for exemplary service. When you think brand, don't think logos and taglines and corporate standards. Those in fact may not mean nearly as much as they used to. But what those things represent - your culture, your values, the value you provide, the trust you've created over time - provides the key to differentiating your business in an age when choice might be limited but trust in corporations is at an all time low. This, for example, is why thousands upon thousands of small business owners not only choose AmEx for the plastic in their wallets but choose OPEN Forum (as opposed to, say, RandomSmallBusinessCommunity.com) as their online meeting place.

Data is king. Well yes, of course it is. Chenault spoke about data as one of AmEx's most valuable assets. AmEx is (somewhat) uniquely positioned to own the data that comes from what he calls a "digital closed loop". Because they have both an extensive consumer network and an extensive merchant network they can derive powerful insights about attitudes and actions throughout the entire buy/sell process. Not everyone has that, of course. Even data monsters like Google really only see part of the process -- they know what you search for and where you clicked, but lose you before the transaction is made (especially if you end up purchasing offline). But the takeaway for any business is this: own your data and leverage it to forge a deeper understanding of your customers' actions (what they actually do) and aspirations (predictive modeling to gauge what they're likely to do in the future). If you're reading between the lines, you might already have a sense that AmEx's closed loop data has been a nice bargaining chip in its dealings with top social platforms. It's also fundamental to the guts of a program like Link Like Love, that uses your Facebook likes to deliver personalized offers.

Scale is being redefined. Here, I was hoping for a microMARKETING plug but instead got quite the opposite. Ken said, "When Facebook has 900 million people, your 10 million customers aren't enough." While you might interpret this as one-percenter, imperialist, might-makes-right thinking the underlying premise is that in a world where data is king, the more people you're connected to, the bigger your data store, and the greater your opportunity for insights. Beyond the data though, the redefinition of scale carries an interesting business insight -- that it has become more important to be inclusive than it is to be exclusive. Facebook didn't really become a business until it moved beyond its college student core and opened its doors to everyone else. AmEx has focused heavily on exclusivity for more than a century - and while their Centurion and Platinum card brands and their services that provide cardmember only access to all sorts of experiences aren't going away any time soon, they are accelerating their move into new products to attract and engage entirely new customer segments. On the one hand this could be pre-paid charge cards, while on the other it could be innovative partnerships with financial service providers in BRIC countries. It could also take the form of seamless integration with Twitter and Foursquare so there is no technical barrier to social transactions.

If you're going to transform the company around digital, it has to happen across the entire company. For all the focus on social business, the truth is that most businesses haven't even successfully made the shift from analogue to digital. For many, digital becomes a role. Digital becomes a department. Digital becomes an outpost. Walmart comes to mind - for all their innovation through Walmart Labs, that digital unit isn't even based in Bentonville where the emphasis remains squarely focused on merchandising the brick-and-mortar stores. To truly thrive in a post-digital world, companies need to converge offline and online, and every employee needs to adopt a digital-first mindset. Your traditional assets - whether those assets are a resonant brand; a large network of customers, suppliers, partners and employees; access to real world transaction data; state-of-the-art physical plants; or well-made products - are no less important today. But it's equally if not more important to develop clear, actionable plans for leveraging those assets into new, digital-forward initiatives. And it should be the responsibility of everyone in your organization to think about how to make this happen.

I think this is all pretty compelling stuff - but also practical thinking that any company can use. How do you think you might apply these four concepts to your business? What would you change? What would you add?

According to Forrester, it might be confusion, politics and the shock of the new. Get past that and you’re faced with a world of opportunity — to reinvent pieces of your business that haven’t traditionally been considered “marketing”, to rethink your approach to audiences and new markets, and to get creative in involving your customers in all sorts of innovation. This week’s Five For Friday is all about making change happen. Here are The Five for the week ending May 11th:

How to Cure Social Media ParalysisCMOs and Marketing VPs agree that social has a huge impact on how consumers view brands, and yet they’re still not moving to incorporate it into their overall marketing strategy. Why? Confusion, company politics, and endless new distractions lead to a lack of movement, according to a new study by Forrester. More importantly, Marketing heads know they need a strategy, but can’t seem to come up with one. A few pointers: learn from others who are already working off a successful social strategy. Be willing to evolve and change as you go along — don’t jump ship if your first entrance isn’t exactly a hit. Reorganize, refocus, and try again. Finally, differentiate between platforms and plan accordingly. It’s not coincidence that some of the most successful companies on social networks have people devoted to each platform, sometimes audiences within those platforms. Think of social as a loose collection of many opportunities to engage and build relationships, in real time, rather than just another way to beam out your company’s agenda.

Customer Service A Strategic Imperative For CMOs Consumers are pickier, harder to please, and more informed than ever before. There’s really no fooling them any longer. What to do? Ramping up efforts to truly pay attention to your customer service is a fine start. Bad reputations spread faster than ever — so who wouldn’t want more stories about how simple and enjoyable your customers’ experiences are, and fewer customer complaints. Zappos is a well-known leader in the category of customer satisfaction. Unlike many other companies (especially online retailers) they make the idea of satisfying their customer a company-wide obsession. It isn’t about just having a streamlined feedback box, call/email service or team looking after the issue–the pursuit has to permeate the company from top to bottom and side to side. These days, if you’re not worried about what’s making your customers happy, you’re not worried about staying in business. Social media is certainly a necessary part of the mix, but it must be implemented wisely and strategically–a wrong move can land you many more angry customers. Think hard about how social fits into your company’s overall marketing/customer relations strategy before launching the tweets.

Content Is No Longer King As you know, content and the way that content is distributed has seen a massive upheaval. But while everyone’s been making a fuss over content and media, the real aim here should be (and has always been) to reach an audience. And how exactly are you planning to use all these new distribution channels to reach your audience? Don’t sideline it or make it somebody else’s night job — or even worse, someone else’s problem. Create a position that focuses chiefly on audience development. Draft a strategy based on how those audiences are finding and using your content. Develop systems to organize and manage all that audience data, and use that information to put content where your audiences want it.

Are You Targeting a Phantom Market? Good piece about choosing the right markets to enter to further your growth agenda. Using Kellogg breakfast cereal in India as as the primary example, it goes on to say that it’s not always so easy to simply capture a small fragment of that huge, established market. Sometimes your company needs put in the legwork to identify a brand new market, and deliver on its needs fully. How can you accurately gauge market interest and their value for your company and product? Get accurate, honest insights into the existing markets and consumer behaviors. Don’t assume anything without solid data to back it up. After you have that, create an innovative product that is made for this real market and offers something the competitors don’t and that the market genuinely wants–even if they don’t realize it yet.

Five Things All Companies Can Learn from Kickstarter (and Amanda Palmer) Marketers and companies can learn a few things from Kickstarter’s runaway success. It’s a crowdsourced fundraising platform driven by a community of individuals who believe passionately in the projects they choose to fun — and those projects can be almost anything. And the impact on the projects can be jaw-dropping. Amanda Palmer is a singer who raised nearly half-a-million dollars to fund the recording, distribution and marketing of her latest album (an advance far greater than she would have received from even the most major of labels). But aside from the obvious upside for project starters, the system bakes in ample upside for the funders — and that’s where the biggest lessons for businesses lie. Benefits for funders (aside from the satisfaction of giving of course) include perks unique to each project and creator, and this excitement makes something that’s normally tedious (fundraising) into a really exciting, social exchange between creators and the people who want the creation. The point is: allow your fans, customers, communities and/or audiences to engage creatively with you and one another, bake in the right kinds of benefits and rewards, and the results may surprise you in the best way.

This year, April showers aren't just bringing us May flowers. They've also brought us our first May edition of Five for Friday -- or Cinco para Viernes if I remember any of our high school Spanish.

This week, we're talking about social, social and more social. What it means for entertainment and media companies. Why you may not want to get too attached to Facebook. How Google might be botching it (again). And some practical advice and provocative questions for marketers still struggling to get social right.

Enjoy this week's Five for Friday. And then get out there and enjoy Cinco de Mayo.

Lights, Camera, Action: How Social Media Changes the Entertainment ExperienceSocial media is having a measurable influence on the ways people are consuming their entertainment and sharing it. While most are still more influenced by traditional marketing when deciding on which movie to see, for instance, they are increasingly using social networks on their mobile devices while watching that movie -- in theaters. It’s a strange form of multimedia multitasking that has generally been portrayed as the effect of shorter attention spans for younger people. But it might actually reflect our growing ability to pay equal attention to many important things at once. Hmmm. The point is that social media is not the distraction point, but the connecting factor for many forms of entertainment. It should be leveraged, not ignored.

Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 YearsFacebook and Google are titans of the Internet, but could they eventually become the victims of their birth-generations? The article goes on to explain that, when filtered through sociology and when viewing the corporate landscape as a sort of ecology, companies are subject to the quirks and traits of their heritage and starting point. Not unlike how a Baby Boomer or Millennial is to hers. Maybe the “older generation” of Internet companies can’t ever fully adapt and adopt the new laws of the land (social, mobile, location-based services), despite constant efforts to “innovate.” Perhaps it’s just a matter of time--despite money, leadership, and past successes. Facebook still has no idea how to successfully monetize mobile. Google+ has, so far, been somewhat unsuccessful in entering the social realm that Facebook succeeds in. Neither one is native to mobile, and that’s where the world is headed, fast. So read that headline again and ask yourself just how crazy it sounds.

Hey Google — your G+ desperation is showingOn the topic of Google, a short but worthwhile sentiment: The G+ social network is getting seriously hungry for some action, and their efforts to fully integrate the network into all aspects of Googledom are starting to irk some users. With the addition of a G+ like button on all YouTube videos replacing the familiar thumbs-up icon, social media celebs are openly calling Google on their very shameless play. The lesson here: Even Google needs to step back and take a hard look at their strategy and what their users actually want.

6 New Maxims For Social MarketingHere are some good takeaways for companies trying to get “social”: Your customers have many constantly-expanding networks on social platforms with which to share content and, potentially, your content. Find creative ways to appeal to people and let them bring you into their conversations. Stop relying on old measurement techniques when gauging success on social--it’s more influential than you think, and numbers still can’t reflect the cross-platform sharing that goes on. Don’t get distracted by ROI tunnel-vision. Work on making a real investment and connection with what interests your audience. Finally, don’t just funnel your customers’ thoughts about your product or service into a dead end--put their feedback to good use, find ways to address their concerns, and make it a priority to really consider your audience before acting.

And 6 Questions All CMOs Need To Ask ThemselvesA short checklist for CMOs and VPs of Marketing. Ask yourself: Am I contributing anything of worth to my customer, or simply throwing shameless promotion at them constantly? Am I interacting meaningfully with that nice, big number of followers, or just finding new ways to build it? Am I telling an engaging and dynamic story with my content?